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Thursday, March 8, 2012

Fire and Ice: Behind the scenes

I've always been a huge Ralph Bakshi fan. I've even loved his contentious use of rotoscope to animate his movies which he used in Hey Good Looking, Wizards, LOTR, Fire and Ice and American Pop.

One of my least favorite of his fantasy films of his surprisingly is Fire and Ice. One would think that gathering together Bakshi, Frank Frazetta and Roy Thomas would produce one hell of a fantastic fantasy drama, after-all, these three creators are seen by some to be the top in the genre at the time. Frazetta's artwork being transferred to the screen is a blast to watch but that doesn't save the plodding stereotypical fantasy story.

Teegra, anyone?

Regardless, seeing how Bakshi works his magic is quite thrilling. I've always loved the process of classic hand drawn animation but Bakshi took it one level further. Having to shoot the entire movie in live action and then illustrating it to later embed into a fantasy world has always seemed like a grand mystery. The video clip below shows Bakshi's rotoscoping process and it's quite amazing to watch:

It's interesting to note that his use of rotoscope was looked down upon by traditional animators. However, with today's use of motion capture to animate modern CGI creations like the creatures in Avatar and Gollum from Peter Jackson's LOTR, Bakshi can be thought of as a forerunner to modern-day special affects.

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Character Sheet

I grew up with comics and got into D&D with Holmes Basic back in '78. I loved the game back then and played Champions, Top Secret, and tons of other games by SPI and Avalon Hill. Got out of gaming in the mid 80's and haven't played since. After Gary passed I discovered the Retro Clones and really got into the whole grass-roots DIY vibe. I have a sandbox campaign going since 2009 using Swords & Wizardry and some House Rules.